Profile

SARA is the Dutch National High Performance Computing and e-Science Support Center, and the Dutch supernode in the international Science Grid. SARA supports research in the Netherlands by:

• state-of-the-art integrated services, facilities and infrastructure (High Performance Computing and Networking, Data Storage, Visualization, e-Science Services)
• multi-disciplinary expertise and support in ICT and applications
• innovation, engineering and development
• making advanced technology available and usable
• development and engineering of new technologies
• connection to and integration into international e-Infrastructures
• participation in national and international HPC and e-Science projects

Advanced infrastructure, service, support, innovation and development go hand in hand.

SARA's service portfolio:

High Performance Computing
Supporting (Grand Challenge) applications on:

• Dutch National Supercomputer (IBM Power6 system, 60 TFlop/s)
• National Compute Cluster (Dell Xeon InfiniBand cluster, 19 TFlop/s)
• GPGPU cluster (HP NVIDIA Tesla cluster)

High Performance Networking

• operations of Dutch NREN SURFnet6
• operations of the Dutch GOLE (GLIF Open Lightpath Exchange) NetherLight
• research in optical (lambda) networking (Lightpath planning and monitoring)
• research in end-to-end performance of media streaming

High Performance Visualization

• visualization of large scientific data
• ultra-high-resolution remote visualization services and support
• ultra-high-resolution video streaming (store-and-forward)
• SAGE Scalable Advanced Graphics Environment for collaborative visualization

Data Storage

• national e-Science Data Center
• Dutch LHC Tier-1 site
• advanced data services and support

e-Science Operations and Support

• Dutch Science Grid BiG Grid
• service and application development
• Dutch Life Science Grid
  
• High Performance Cloud services

The national supercomputer Huygens, an IBM POWER6 system.